center channel install

fish369

Been away too long from the car audio game. Need some help hooking up a center channel speaker in my ole plow truck. Running Stillwater 3.5 inchers in the dash off a Carver amp. Ran a lead off the right, neg and left, pos speaker to the center, but it doesn't work! Do I need to run the lead off the right and left of the amp? Been away tooooo long.

jdhdiggs

Off topic a bit if someone can add the info: How does the center channel help a 2 channel source in CA?

Jstas

First off, jdhdiggs, you can get complete 5.1 surround sound processors in your car. The Civic at Polk HQ that was under teh Dodge Magnum had just such a set up.

However, if I am reading fish369's post correctly, he has wired his left speaker up to the left channel and his right speaker up to the right channel and has then attempted to bridge the left and right channels with a center speaker. With speakers wired to both channels, bridging them to form a 3rd center channel only shorts out the amplifier output circuits.

fish369, why are you trying wire up a center channel speaker anyway?

jdhdiggs

Thanks John, so basically the same deal as a 5.1 in HA... Hmm, I was hoping it would do more to stear the image to make for the bad shape of a car for better 2-channel performance.

Wished the keys would have worked on the civic... Would have been nice to goes "ears on" on that setup.

Jstas

I have seen setups with SQ in mind use a center tweeter to skew imaging and create depth in the sound stage before. However, it requires some fancy crossover workings to get a single speaker to work. I have seen dual tweeters placed next to each other with a seperate left and right channel set there too and that would be an easier crossover setup. I never liked that idea though. It creates a false image that seems hollow. It is usually bouncing off of the windsheild and causes a sort of time delay in the sound. Usually to get it to work right you need to shove it all the way to the front of the dash at the base of the windsheild. At that point, the problems caused by reflections are too great to overcome easily with electronics and accuracy of the sound reproduction suffers and the sound is muddy.

If it is a 5.1 channel setup then you need an approrpaite reciever with a DVD or SACD capability and a digital signal processor to handle the Dolby or DTS encoding and video signal. Not to mention the monitor.The biggest problem is that in pretty much every state, the movie can not be playing on the screen while the car is moving IF the screen is visible to the driver. So all these dash units are really useless unless you have a sat-nav system or a touch screen capability. Expensive and complicated stuff but if you have a van or SUV and haul a bunch of kids long distances, a movie theater in the car can be a godsend.

hoosier21

Old school for sure.

Here is what he is asking for "The Wired approach"
http://www.termpro.com/articles/center.html

You have hooked it up correctly, you sure the center speaker is a working speaker? Checked all the connections?

"Do I need to run the lead off the right and left of the amp?"
And it doesn't matter if you connect the center channel wire "+" to the left "+" speaker terminal or the left amp "+" terminal, electrically it is the same. Same for the "-" connections.

fish369

Old school for sure, you are the man hoosier21, I can even remember the Jag on the cover of that issue. Exactly what I was looking for!

Thanks